


unless someone wants to listen

by EasyPeasyPanic



Series: all of my founders era fics [12]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, I'm not sure how else to tag this, My version of what happened to Uchiha Kagami, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:48:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23514163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EasyPeasyPanic/pseuds/EasyPeasyPanic
Summary: If someone asks Torifu what happened that day, he'll say he doesn't really know all the details.But even without the details, everybody knows what happened. It isn't hard to fit the pieces together.Right?
Series: all of my founders era fics [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1718458
Comments: 8
Kudos: 63
Collections: why im sleep deprived 💖✨





	unless someone wants to listen

* * *

If someone asks Torifu what happened  _ that _ day, he'll say he doesn't really know all the details. He'll say he was leading a squad of his own, parallel to his two former teammates. The Escort Unit had been disbanded a year prior, although they all tended to run together and overlap. 

It had been going relatively well, or at least it had been for Torifu's team. All chūnin, all experienced in the field, most of them from noble clans and well-trained. It was a stroke of luck to have been picked for this squad, he'd drawn straws with Kagami and Danzou for them. 

They got the duds. Or as Danzou liked to call them with a twisted smile, the blunts.  _ Like a blunt kunai, not much help in battle and not very sharp.  _ An unexperienced team consisting mostly of civilian chūnin and a few older genin that couldn't be promoted in war times. 

"I don't know what went wrong after we seperated." Torifu tells his old friend, his closest companion now that…

That Kagami was gone. 

Hiruzen gives him a tight smile, strained and exhausted. Leadership wasn't a good color on him, it didn't set well on him, it was like wearing a lead vest in the ocean, he was sinking. 

"Ambushed. I know they were ambushed, Hiru-- Hokage-sama." Torifu closes his eyes, trying to think of exactly  _ what  _ happened that day. It's been replaying through his head on repeat since it happened. His last words to them. 

_ "Try not to lose too many of those blunt kunai! If you sharpen them up, they might come in handy later!" _

It hadn't occurred to him that they should stick together. Or maybe Torifu should've volunteered to switch places with them, to send Kagami with his team and lead the others with Danzou. Or maybe the other way around. 

He knows they got ambushed, he tells Hiruzen with regret in every single word. But Torifu had orders to deliver his scrolls to the Captain at the border, and couldn't find the time to turn around and assist at first. It was an important assignment, which was why they had the two teams to begin with, to have one play the scapegoat. 

It took him a few hours to get back to their location, but when he did get there, it had been nothing short of a total massacre. Torifu can't describe in enough detail  _ what  _ exactly had happened. 

"It had been a seven member team, including Danzou and Kagami. I'd taken six. By the time we returned, I only saw Danzou standing there. He… well, you saw him when we returned. He wasn't himself. But he was mourning either. He was standing there, blood-soaked, surrounded by so many  _ bodies _ ."

There hadn't been an inch of ground that hadn't been soaked in blood. Torifu remembers giving the orders to fan out, to search and secure the perimeter in case of enemy backup. 

Sixteen bodies in total, ten of which were enemy shinobi and six allies. Danzou was just standing there, his lips pursed, soaked in blood. There was a lazy cut across his throat, not deep enough to nick anything vital, a stab wound going shallowly through his hip, and his face was slathered in  _ red.  _ Torifu couldn't have told anyone if Danzou had injured his head or not in the moment, there had been too much blood blackening against his hair and face, so he assumed he had. His armour was cracked and he wasn't moving. 

He was rigid, head down, one hand shakingly tight around his sword (in the wrong hand, Danzou was left handed, but his sword was in his right). He hadn't moved, hadn't responded to Torifu's voice, hadn't even blinked. 

His other hand was holding something. Torifu couldn't have begun to say for certain what it was, but a part of him  _ knew _ . Pale fingers were loose around whatever it was, delicately holding it, but they were jarringly wet with blood. Fresh, bright red blood, oxidized and not yet drying. 

He had been standing over Kagami. The blood on his blade was slick and fresh, and he was standing over Kagami. Kagami, who had two stab wounds, who had been pierced twice through his side where the armour didn't cover going through his innards, and once through the chest plate of his armour. Right into his heart.

Kagami laid dead at Danzou's feet, and the other hadn't said a single word. Just stared down at him with a sword that had been used not long before. 

He hadn't moved a single muscle. He refused, just  _ standing  _ there. And Torifu had been forced to drag him for the first couple of feet, until he stumbled forward, his lips thinning out into neutrality. He walked, but he said nothing. The entire walk home, not a word. Sword in one hand, and his other one folded around something. 

Shaky hands. He never lifted his head, just let it hang. Like he was guilty. 

"I didn't believe it, didn't even think of it at first, Hiruzen. I didn't--" Torifu swallows back a retch, just remembering the stillness in Kagami. The armour twisted downwards from the force of whatever sword pierced him, and his lips still poised to say something. Old tears tracked on red cheeks. "But Kagami was still warm when I arrived. The rest of the squad wasn't. I didn't check the foreign shinobi. I  _ didn't _ think to."

"It wasn't your responsibility to handle foreign bodies." Hiruzen comforts, though poorly. His voice shakes with grief, perhaps for Kagami, perhaps for Danzou There are bags beneath his eyes, like deep bruises. He's aged so much from the young man he was last year. "Please, continue." 

Torifu doesn't accuse or deny, he just tells Hiruzen what he's seen and understood. "They'd been arguing for weeks, privately. I don't know why. They were fighting when our groups parted, although making a point of being quiet about it. I'm not making any accusations, but...it wasn't a good scene. But I wasn't there for what happened. All I saw was the aftermath." 

(If someone asks him what happened the day Kagami dies, Torifu won't say a word. Not to Koharu or Homura, not even to Kagami's mother. Only to Hiruzen, as the Hokage, because the story doesn't sound right. It doesn't make much sense, not even to Torifu. He's missing too many details. It isn't something worth telling.)

Hiruzen's eyes are distant and so tired. 

"Thank you for telling me."

Torifu doesn't know exactly what happened, but he can put all the pieces together. He doesn't say anything, but he  _ knows _ . 

(And he never forgives his former friend for it.)

**_____ **

Nobody asks Hiruzen about what happens  _ that _ day because there's nobody above him for him to report to, though he wishes so much that there was. Sensei would know exactly how to handle the situation, and he was much more perceptive to miniscule details than Hiruzen, and could have pieced together exactly what happened in less than an hour. 

But all he has is a scattered report of what happened from Torifu, from a few of the chūnin that happened to have helped collect bodies, and from Danzou himself. He also has what happened immediately after his old friend returned back to the village. 

He breaks every single protocol they have in place during high-stakes missions and war assignments by going to his house before reporting to Hiruzen. It takes several hours before Hiruzen actually sees his friend in his office, far too long after the initial report from Torifu than it should have been. 

He'd stumbled in with tight bandages around his face, trembling hands, and disheveled everything else. Danzou's hair had been stuck to his face still with blood and sweat, sticky and dark. His armour had been replaced by a untied yukata over his torn shirt and pants, still blood soaked and clinging to his limbs. A dark stain was saturated to his side, and he was limping horribly, but his one eye had been…

Blank. Completely devoid of emotion. 

"You were supposed to come here as soon as you arrived back." Which had been around sundown, but then it had been completely black outside. It was a dark night. The stars and moon were hidden by the clouds, and the man in front of him had been swaying from side to side. 

His chakra had been fluxtuating wildly. Thin and loose, twisting around him like armour and then retreating back, pulled and strained, and it was the first time Hiruzen had ever been afraid of Danzou's death by chakra exhaustion. It had been like something had been throwing his entire system out of alignment, and the pit of Hiruzen's stomach had knotted worse. 

"I...I had to get some...I needed treatment for my… my eye was injured."

(Later, Hiruzen would go through the medical records that he requested from that pretty nurse Biwako, and he'll learn Danzou never checked into the hospital. There's absolutely no documentation of his presence or treatment.)

"That isn't protocol." Hiruzen hadn't meant to relax, but he had easily. It made sense, with all that adrenaline and all those instincts kicking in, to go for self-preservation. It was a forgivable offence. If it meant his friend was okay, then it had been forgivable. "But that's alright. It's alright."

It wasn't alright. If Hiruzen hadn't been grieving, if he hadn't been so broken up about Kagami, if he hadn't been trying not to cry, he could've focused on the disheveled appearance. Of the unhealed slash against Danzou's throat, the seeping wound on his side, the limp, all things that could've been taken care of by the medical ninja who treated his eye. But he doesn't. 

Not then. 

His mind denies it. Danzou is his best friend. Kagami was just as close to both of them. Just like how his mind denies Torifu's initial report, where he made no mention of an eye injury. 

Danzou's report had been short and contradicting. He'd stumbled on his words, fidgeted and never met Hiruzen's gaze directly. An ambush, ten opponents. The genin had died first, right before Danzou had been struck through the side, making him falter. Kagami swooped in to defend him, but then he had been struck down, and Danzou helped finish off his attackers with a chūnin that was stabbed through the throat. Kagami died after that, or maybe he'd died before that, but Danzou backtracked. Went back over his role in killing three of the foreign shinobi. He skipped over Kagami again and again, until it became unclear how or when Kagami died. 

"What about your neck?"

"Hm?" Danzou's fingers had brushed against the scabbed injury, but he distanced his gaze again. His stare went blank, like he was lost in his own head. "I don't-- I don't know. I--"

Hiruzen had sent him home. 

And then ordered an autopsy of Uchiha Kagami's body through the newly established ANBU system, and he kept it private. Both eyes were missing, though Kagami had only been missing one before the mission. (The other had been taken around the same time that Sensei...died.) But Hiruzen can't bring himself to ask Danzou about that, can't force himself to acknowledge what  _ might _ have happened. 

But Hiruzen wonders what exactly they'd been fighting about before their mission. He wonders how Danzou does it, if he waits until Kagami's compromised, until he's cut straight through and can't get up, if Kagami tries to fight back. Maybe he manages to get at Danzou's throat, maybe he's too weak to kill him, maybe that's when Danzou  _ strikes _ . He isn't as soft as he used to be, not since Tobirama-sensei died and all of his praise with him. Danzou's always needed that special attention, that line to which he would strive to cross to prove himself, and he's been cold ever since. Angry and reserved and far too dangerous for Hiruzen to even begin to approach and understand. 

Volatile and depressed. It wasn't a good combination, especially not with a war going on around them and so  _ much loss _ . Hiruzen tries to pretend it doesn't bother him, that he doesn't believe he knows what's happened, but deep down it makes his stomach hurt to imagine what happened that day in those woods, and there's no one left to tell the tale.

(Did Danzou kill them too? To rid them of any witnesses?)

So how did it go? Kagami was wounded, too injured to defend himself. Everyone was dead around them, nobody left to intervene on the Uchiha's behalf, no enemies left to fear. But ample opportunity to turn that tragic massacre into a chance for advantage and revenge. Had Danzou turned his blade against Kagami because of their arguments? Or out of greed? Out of that lost desire for  _ more more more _ ? Was Danzou still trying to prove himself? To hit that imaginary line of impressiveness and win their late sensei's affection and praises? Did he steal away Kagami's Sharingan to make himself feel  _ strong _ ? To finally win? 

Hiruzen doesn't ask anymore questions about that mission. He can't bring himself to think his friend had fallen so low as to becoming a shameless friend killer. 

He throws away the autopsy report and the newly revised mission report that he had Torifu write out. 

**_____ **

Koharu's particularly cruel about what she thinks happened, but she's also particularly cautious enough to only share her thoughts with a trusted friend. Her brown eyes gleam with undiluted honesty. 

"We all know what happened." She tells Homura, quietly as they lean against the door of their office. She glanced down a dark, empty hallway, keeping watch. "I was in the mission room when the original reports are writtten. We saw the look on Torifu's face." 

Homura frowns, crossing his arms around him like a shield. "We don't know anything." He said quietly. "But Hiruzen looked..."

"Just as guilty as Danzou." Koharu finished, her voice lowering. She put a cool hand against his shoulder, squeezing comfortingly. "Because he knows as well as we do what he did. How far Danzou went-- I'm actually impressed." 

Homura yanks his arm away, eyes wide. " _Impressed_?"

"And terrified." She admits. 

He takes his glasses off, cleaning them with his shirt furiously. A distraction to keep his hands busy, and mind from wandering off into darker thoughts, but it's too late for that. He takes a deep breath, slipping them back up his nose.

"We need to avoid him." Homura said urgently. "Like Torifu is, before he stabs us in the back too."

"No." Koharu says with a twist of her lips. "No, we need to befriend him, be kinder to him now more than before. We aren't like him or Saru." Her eyes are bitter, but honest. She's always been blunt. "We aren't impressive, we aren't true prodigies. If he wanted us dead, we'd be dead. But if he doesn't? We can rise just as high as him, and live far longer if we align ourselves with him. We make ourselves useful, we play on his side, we make ourselves allies he can't afford to lose. And after what he did? He needs allies."

"Align ourselves with him." Homura echoes. He closes his eyes, says a quiet prayer to Kagami for this betrayal, because they truly had been friends, and nods his head. But Homura wants to live. "Alright." 

"Good." 

**_____ **

I t's filed away in a mixture of written inconclusives by Hiruzen and the inconsistences in the stories are easily remedied by a few changes to Danzou's statement by rewriting them. 

Nobody asks anymore questions. Nobody makes any face to face accusations. Besides the original Escort Unit, besides that very select handful of people, nobody really knows exactly what's happened. Nobody wants to learn the truth. Nobody asks Danzou what really happened in the light of day, after the shock and grief have worn off, and he could probably give a better recount. 

Nobody asks because that would be a truth they couldn't face, if he admitted to having really done it, they wouldn't know what to do. Hiruzen wouldn't know what to do with that information. Because Danzou is his friend and he wants to see the best in him, he wants to always see the best in him. He's a good person, deep down, and if he admits to it or if Hiruzen catches him lying, it would  _ shatter  _ what little reprieve he has left. It isn't worth it. 

It isn't worth losing what little they have left. It's a choice. A living friend against a dead one, and Hiruzen has to keep everyone who's still living as close as he can. 

(Ignorance is bliss. And Hiruzen is smart enough to stay in the dark for as long as he can.)

So nobody asks. They let it go. They bury Kagami and they bury the reports in the mess that is their filing and organizational system at that time. Files get lost, papers get refiled into different sections and scrolls are thrown out in confusion, it's a war and war leads to disorganization. And with the Hokage's disinterest in the subject, nobody pursues the case of Uchiha Kagami. An unfortunate death in times of war, another hero to be put on that new memorial being constructed. 

Don't ask. Don't tell. 

But if anyone had bothered to ask afterwards, when the adrenaline and shock of battle had faded away, when the massacre of his tean hadn't been so fresh and traumatizing in the man's mind, the story would have been like this:

**_____ **

_ Danzou's hands are trembling against Kagami's sides, trying to stop the bleeding on both sides. He's muttering to himself again and again.  _

_ "You're okay. You're okay." _

_ Maybe it's for him, maybe for Kagami. He doesn't know. He doesn't know because they could both use the comfort, but everyone's dead and he's alone, and Kagami's bleeding. More internally, he thinks distantly, because the katana went straight through one side of his body, under his ribs, straight through to the other side.  _

_ He can't get his hands to stop shaking.  _

_ "The other unit's coming." He promises, except he doesn't actually know that for certain and he's not sure if Torifu's squad got attacked too. "It'll be soon."  _

_ He doesn't know that either. But he's fighting back adrenaline-fueled panic that makes him want to run. He wants to run as fast as he can all the way back to his village, but he can't. His limbs are trapped here, because his friend is here, and he isn't leaving unless he can bring Kagami back. Because Kagami's still alive. He's still alive.  _

_ But there's a steady flow of blood trickling down his lips, staining his chin, and he's coughing and hacking up more, and Kagami's eye has dulled into a dark black.  _

_ "...it hurts." He gurgles out, lips twisting into a smile that shows off blood-stained teeth. "Dan, hurts." _

_ "We have reinforcements."  _

_ "I'm gonna die...anyway." Kagami's entire body heaves as he breathes wetly through the pain, like he can't get enough air. "Everything's all… torn up inside. Gonna die anyway." His hands are clawing at Danzou's waist, at his sword, pale fingers tugging at the hilt. "You could...do me favor. Dan, it hurts." _

_ "You don't know that. If we get back fast enough, then...then…" _

_ There aren't any medics that can reform organs or even replicate the torn tissue. They can't replace the blood or repair whatever's been destroyed, and without proper blood flow, cells have begun dying. It's not a good situation. Kagami's going to die.  _

_ "It hurts." Kagami repeats, like he can guilt Danzou into doing it for him, but doesn't he know that his teammate's a coward? Kami knows they've been fighting about it since the Uchiha caught him in a rage over Tobirama-sensei's death. A coward that should've become Hokage, but didn't because he was too slow. He hesitated.  _

_ He thought of himself over the village. It couldn't happen again. It could never happen again.  _

_ "I'm going...to die anyway. Please…" He sounds strained now, and he's got his hand against Danzou's now. He pushes down harder, because it isn't clotting. Why isn't the blood stopping? Why isn't it-- _

_ "I can't." _

_ "Please. Please. I'll...even give you a gift for it." He wheezes in a short breath. Blinks up at him with an eye that turns into a dulled red with sluggish tomoe. "I know it's hard, but I...I need you to do it. It hurts. Come on, please…" He's still smiling, even as he offers up his life and his eye to Danzou.  _

_ And he can't. He can't. He… _

_ "Please." _

_ Draws his sword. He doesn't know what to do, but Kagami's expression is pinched and pained. His breathing was heavy and exhausted, and the blood wasn't stopping. It had to hurt, to have your organs shredded through, to have your stomach split open and everything coming out both sides, and Danzou couldn't let him die in agony. Not when it wasn't how he wanted to go.  _

_ "Keep it. And...and use it for the village. And for you...you'll have to save yourself now…" _

_ "Stop it." He demands, suddenly furious. He angles himself right over Kagami, his knees on either side of the other man's hips. "Stop it! Don't-- just don't. I can't--" _

_ (I can't hear you speak before I do this. I can't live with it if I remember it's you that I'm doing this to.) _

_ His hands are trembling. He can't stop shaking, and his hands are slick with blood that makes the sword slip out of his grip again and again.  _

_ "Shut up, shut up, shut up." _

_ He closes his eyes, pretends it isn't Kagami. He imagines that it's an Iwa nin that's just killed those three genin. Pretends it's the Kirigakure shinobi that burned down the Temple with the nice monks that fed them by the border a few years ago. Pretends it isn't Kagami underneath him. It's somebody else. Anybody else.  _

_ It's someone he hates. It's the men that killed Tobirama-sensei. It's his own uncle and cousins. Enemies that just finished a raid on Konohagakure's neighboring civilian villages, slaughtering everyone. It isn't Kagami. It can't be Kagami for him to do it.  _

_ "Are you sure?" He asks. Almost like he's asking himself. "Are you sure?" _

_ (Can I live with this?) _

_ Kagami's voice is soft and unafraid. "Yes." He says, curt and to the point. He's trying to help Danzou distance himself from this moment, trying to help him.  _

_ "And your eye?" _

_ Which he doesn't need. He has two perfectly working ones, but he understands what Kagami means. It's a gift, the ultimate appreciation that an Uchiha can give, a symbol of a deep bond, or a gift for an action that was exceptional. He doesn't need it, but Kagami is giving it to him. _

_ "Yes." _

_ Danzou doesn't hesitate after that. He can't. He hasn't ever hesitated in killing an enemy before, why should this be any different? It's just a Kirigakure shinobi, just a temple-burner, nobody important. One swift motion down as hard as he can and-- _

_ And it's over.  _

_ It's done. One movement of his wrist and Kagami's dead. Still and at peace, and not by his hand. He didn't do this to Kagami. Danzou killed an enemy, not his friend. This was just a casualty of war, like the others. An enemy attack gone wrong.  _

_ He detaches himself from the situation, forces himself to pretend it isn't Kagami he's taking an eye from. It's all mechanical motions, all practised and precise, just a shinobi doing his duty. He takes it like he would take a new sword, and moves away. His heart is drumming, but he steadies his breathing.  _

_ Keeps his mind and face blank. Doesn't bother moving. He keeps still and he stares and _

_ And then Torifu has him. And his squad. Time's running out on how long this eye will last, because it's been dying since he removed it, and he has to be quick. Fast about the situation.  _

_ Kagami gave him this eye before he was killed by an enemy.  _

_ (By his own hand.) _

_ He can't let it die. He can't let Kagami die. He has this last piece of him, and he can't let Kagami's memory fade away. Not like this. Never like this. Kagami was killed for his village to never serve another purpose, not when Danzou can put his eye to use. And so he stumbles home to his apartment, and  _

  
  


_ And it won't hit him what he's done until much later, when he's alone in his room, staring at a familiar red eye that isn't familiar at all on the face that peers back at him. When his heart stops drumming against his ribs, when his body feels made of lead, when he's finally breathing on his own, he'll know what he did and what happened.  _

_ And by then, everyone already thinks they know what he's done, so it doesn't really matter then, does it? _

* * *


End file.
